https://www.theinformation.com/articles/googles-defense-against-openai-talent-grab-special-stock

Even as Google makes a major round of staff cuts, it is tapping a special pool of stock compensation to retain its top artificial intelligence researchers as rival OpenAI lures them with multimillion-dollar pay packages.

Select researchers at Google's DeepMind unit, which is at the center of its most important initiatives, have received large grants of restricted stock worth up to millions of dollars per person, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Leaders of the unit have been increasingly using a little-known advanced compensation program to compete with OpenAI's eye-popping offers, one of the people said.